She knew which desert plants the horses would avoid and which were safe. She knew how to strip and dry agave hearts for provisions that would keep through winter. She knew how to read a dust haze on the horizon and what it meant about incoming weather. Wesley had ranched in that country for years and discovered he had not been paying close enough attention. He woke one morning in the first days of the new year to find her cradleboard propped against the barn wall where the sun could warm it.
She'd cleaned it and restrung it with fresh rawhide thongs. He asked about it and she answered with one word. The Chiricahua word for memory. He didn't ask more. He found himself doing small things without thinking about it.
Leaving the coffee on the stove in the mornings in case she rose after him, clearing a better view from her east-facing window when the mesquite overgrew it, fixing the sticking latch on her door first when there was a list of things to fix. He didn't examine these things. They were just what you did for someone who lived in your house and had begun to matter to you. Then came the riders. It was late January.
Wesley was at the far end of the property checking fence line when he heard the horses. Three of them coming from the south road fast and without any particular attempt to announce themselves. He rode back hard. He got to the yard in time to see them already there. Two white men, bounty hunters by the look of them, armed and wearing the particular kind of studied indifference that men wear when they're about to do something they know someone will object to.
The third man he did not recognize at first glance. He was Chiricahua, younger than the others. With a rifle across his saddle and his eyes on Sonsee. She was standing at the corner of the house. She had not run.
Duclura. It was him. Sonsee said his name low when Wesley drew up beside her and the word was flat and without fear, the way you say the name of a known thing. The bounty hunters had a paper or claimed to have one. There were rumors they said of Chiricahua women who had left the reservation without leave, who could be returned for money.
They said this cheerfully in the way of men who consider paperwork a formality. The one with the paper held it up but didn't offer to let Wesley read it. Duclura said nothing. He watched Sonsee with the expression of a man who has been waiting a long time to be paid what he thinks he is owed. Wesley said, "She lives here.